Downtown Workers Welcome Cvs

Downtown Workers Welcome Opening Of New Drugstore

October 10, 1992|By GREGORY SEAY; Courant Staff Writer

It's lunch time but Nancy Lundmark isn't thinking about food. She is ill.

Waiting to have a prescription filled at the new CVS drugstore at Main Street and Central Row downtown, Lundmark said she used to walk several blocks to one of the two other downtown pharmacies. Or she stopped by one on her way home from work.

Instead, the CVS drugstore that opened this week in the 750 Main St. building -- and relief for what ails her -- is just a few paces from where she works as a billing manager for Travelers Corp.

Dorothy McCallop, a tax clerk for the city of Hartford, said the 1 1/2 block walk from her office to CVS on her lunch hour would spare her a drive from her Hartford home to the nearest CVS.

"This is a convenience," she said after browsing the 6,632-square-foot store and paying for a can of nuts.

The opportunity to attract customers such as Lundmark and McCallop is why CVS said it has returned to the heart of downtown Hartford after 14 years.

Unable to find space big enough and affordable to replace a tiny store razed to make way for the Pavilion at State House Square, CVS left downtown in 1978.

Now, the tables have turned. CVS is back downtown, lured by a market that is offering attractive lease packages to retail tenants to fill acres of empty space.

CVS' arrival also serves as a counterbalance to retailers that are departing downtown. Its opening comes less than a month after G. Fox & Co. announced plans to close Jan. 31 its historic Main Street department store just a block away.

CVS began preparing its return to downtown last winter, months before G. Fox's announcement. The lure was the office canyons in downtown Hartford and the people who work in them, not the presence of G. Fox, said Jerry Soucy, the CVS regional director of real estate who oversaw talks on the downtown lease.

"With G. Fox leaving, we probably still would have taken the space despite the retail environment down there," Soucy said. "We

felt our business was needed."

Soucy said the drugstore chain had had trouble finding a suitable downtown location over the years. That is, until CVS found empty space in 750 Main that had been a branch office for former Connecticut Bank & Trust.

Neither CVS nor the management firm that runs the building for its owner, New England Mutual Life Insurance Co., disclosed financial terms of CVS' 10-year lease.

But Jim Williams, of Kuzmak-Williams Co., the building's manager, said New England Mutual paid $250,000 toward the cost to renovate the former CBT branch. In addition, the landlord agreed to provide CVS an extra 1,500 square feet of basement storage space at no charge.

CVS paid to install racks, shelves and inventory.

"CVS wouldn't be making the move unless they saw something good happening here," Williams said.

Since its opening Monday, traffic through the store has boomed. A line greeted the store when its doors opened on a chilly Monday morning without a formal announcement that it was opening.

Operating hours are in step with downtown's office clock during the week -- open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The store is also open Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Store manager Bruce Wassung said CVS is confident it will get enough business from weekend shoppers and downtown visitors to justify Saturday openings. The downtown store is closed Sundays.

On a recent weekday, a steady stream of people in suits, jeans and work uniforms streamed into the store during lunch hour.

Like CVS' 82 other Connecticut stores -- 20 of which are in the Greater Hartford area -- the new store has a full-service pharmacy, assorted health and beauty aids and snacks. However, the Main Street store offers a wider selection of convenience foods -- such as microwaveable soups, yogurt and soft drinks -- and stationery, said Wassung.

In the morning, customers on their way to work stop in to load up on snack foods and juices, he said.

But the busiest period is the lunch hour, from noon to 2 p.m. The store has averaged 400 customers an hour at lunchtime the first three days it was open, said Frank Remillard, assistant manager.

Half of the store's 27 employees are on the floor at that period, including six working at cash registers to keep the aisles flowing.

Ed Gawlinski, another Travelers employee, is in the store on his lunch break to buy film. The opening of a CVS near his downtown office, he said, broadens his limited shopping time.